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Sales of Orwell's '1984' Soar Amid NSA Surveillance Disclosure

Tracy Bloom left broadcast news to study at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. There she eventually became deputy editor of Neon Tommy, the most-trafficked online-only college website in…

Big Brother is indeed watching us. After the revelation of the National Security Agency’s top-secret snooping programs, sales of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” soared on Amazon. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Centennial edition of Orwell’s classic work had shot up nearly 5,000 percent on Amazon’s Movers & Shakers list, while a 60th anniversary edition was also among the site’s best-sellers.

The Christian Science Monitor:

Based on Orwell’s observations of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, the novel, published in 1949, warns of the dangers of government surveillance. It paints a picture of a state constantly tracking the thoughts and actions of its citizens, crystallized in its slogan “Big Brother is watching you.”

That slogan has been used to describe the government’s recent actions. Recent news has revealed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans to create a database to determine whether terror suspects have been in contact with US residents, according to the AP. The program has reignited the debate about whether heightened security measures to fight terror infringe on privacy and civil rights.

…Not surprisingly, news coverage and social media chatter about the NSA’s surveillance program has been rife with terms like “Big Brother” and “Orwellian,” phrases borrowed from the dystopian world of “1984.”